Popularity doesn’t always reflect preference, as several iconic Canadian foods are commonly avoided by many people.
Some people just do not want meat to taste wild
You certainly can’t pretend that Wild game meat is the same as beef because you’ll notice the difference almost immediately. It has a stronger and earthier flavor, for starters. There’s also the fact that some cuts taste slightly metallic, and that taste lingers for much longer, too.
No matter how many times you try to chew, the taste is still there, and it can be quite hard for most Canadians to get used to it. We tend to decide that a single bite is all that we’re ever going to handle of it.
It goes too far
Montreal smoked meat sounds simple enough since it’s just cured and smoked brisket stacked into a sandwich. Unfortunately, brisket is often more than one simple thing. Delis offer the lean or medium kind, as well as fatty cuts, and these can get rather intense, rather quickly.
There’s a thick layer of rendered fat running through each slice. Soon enough, the sandwich starts tasting rather greasy, and that’s sadly a natural part of how Montreal smoked meat works. It’s where the appeal of it all disappears for some people.
One tiny ingredient starts arguments
Butter tarts should be harmless enough because they’re just pastries filled with sugar, butter, and egg. But then the raisins appear, and everything changes. The real issue is texture because the smooth and sticky filling has chewy bits that break it up.
Not everyone’s into that. Sure, there are some people who love the taste, but you’ll find just as many people who would rather pass as soon as they see raisins in the tart. It really isn’t for everyone.
Some dishes lose people before the first bite
Flipper pie has quite a long history behind it. However, it’s the name alone that stops a lot of people from wanting to try it because, as the name suggests, it’s made from flippers. Namely, it’s made from harp seal flippers that are cooked into a meat pie with vegetables and gravy.
Knowing that the dish contains such an odd ingredient is enough for some people to avoid the dish altogether. They’d rather not get involved with a dish that’s genuinely like the name suggests, certainly not in a good way.
The name is not helping
Another Canadian dish with a strange name is jellied moose nose. Yes, it’s as gross as it sounds. You prepare the dish by boiling a moose’s nose and then letting the broth set into a gelatin, similar to how you make head cheese. That description alone turns off most Canadians.
Jellied moose nose is sliced cold and has a firm texture that’s a lot like jelly, but nowhere near as delicious. The taste itself is bad, sure. Then there’s the look and the texture, all of which hit at the same time to make something truly disgusting.
The sauce catches people off guard
One of the famous dishes in Nova Scotia is the Halifax donair, although it’s the sauce that tends to trip people up. You don’t get something savory. No, instead, the sauce is made from sweetened milk, sugar, vinegar, and garlic, which is too much for many Canadians to handle.
We expect to bite down into a classic meat wrap, but instead, we get sweetness first, followed by some tanginess. Then comes the garlic. It’s hardly a subtle mix of flavors, and the fact that the dish pulls you in so many different directions at once is uncomfortably weird.
It lands like a brick
For anyone who’s not aware, toutons are essentially fried bread dough served with molasses. Sounds simple enough, right? A few Canadians feel tempted to buy one for breakfast because they sound pretty filling, and sure, they are. But they’re also so much worse.
Toutons are dense and slightly greasy, while the heavy syrup they’re usually paired with doesn’t make things much better. They’re manageable when they’re fresh. They’re awful when they’re not, as the texture becomes thick and oily, making chewing the toutons a lot harder than they should be.
Plain is doing a lot of damage here
The thing with bannock is that when it’s good, it’s really good. Unfortunately, most people don’t get the good version first, as they get the dry, thick one and feel immediately turned off by it. It’s the kind of dish that manages to sound both heavy and crumbly at the same time. Gross.
The bad versions of bannock have no real life or strong flavor. There’s nothing pulling it together, and when you take a bite, you might expect some bread, but you actually get something that simply sits there. It’s hard to enjoy something that plain.
It tastes like more fish than people expected
People hear that Arctic char tastes like something between salmon and trout, so they think they’re playing it safe. They’re not. All it takes is a single bite to realize that the flavor is a lot more intense than they realize, as Arctic char is oily in a way that coats your entire mouth.
The flavor also lasts for a lot longer than it should. Anyone used to mild white fish might want to avoid eating Arctic char because it feels a lot more like you’re jumping straight into the deep end. You’re getting all the flavor, regardless of whether you want it, when it’s grilled or pan-seared.
It feels like old pantry food because it is
Speaking of fish, fish and brewis is one of those Canadian meals that made sense when people had to make food last months. That’s not how things are anymore, though.
Fish and brewis are simply salted cod mixed with hard bread, both of which are foods made for storage rather than comfort.
It’s a plate that’s as soft as it is tough, salty but also flat. Don’t forget about the heaviness.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing about it that really stands out, and it usually ends up blending into something that tastes like survival food. It’s not something anyone would willingly choose to eat now.
Texture does all the damage
Yes, you could try explaining all day long that Cod tongues aren’t really tongues, but that won’t make them taste any better. The texture is simply awful. The outside is crispy when it’s fried, yet the inside tastes more like jelly, with a horrible bounce to match when you bite into it.
Of course, there are some people willing to push through that taste, yet most people don’t. Your brain simply isn’t expecting that kind of texture from something that looks like fried seafood. It’s hard to get over such an awful surprise.
It can look like dinner gave up
‘Pale’ doesn’t even begin to describe a bowl of Hodge Podge, which is a dish made from potatoes, beans, peas, and carrots. They sit together in a light cream base that has barely any colours in it.
Really, it’s no wonder so many Canadians are turned off before they even take a bite, and those brave enough to try soon realize that it’s as dull as it looks.
It’s not much more than soft vegetables with a mild flavor. While there’s nothing explicitly wrong with such a dish, there’s also nothing that really stands out, and it doesn’t feel like the dish is trying at all.
Dessert is not supposed to feel this heavy
Dessert is supposed to feel like a break from the main course, but it seems that Figgy Duff didn’t get that message. The dessert feels more like an entire commitment because every bite is dense instead of being fluffy.
That’s mostly because Figgy Duff is made of flour and molasses.
The raisins don’t make it any lighter either because they add more chew to something that’s already quite heavy. With each bite, you might expect it to get easier. It doesn’t.
No, the dessert stays as thick and slightly sticky as it was at the start, which is enough to turn people off it for life.
The name sets a strange mood
A dish with a name like ‘Blueberry grunt’ was always destined to fail. It’s a mix of soft dumplings in hot blueberry sauce that, somehow, always ends up collapsing into itself, and it’s neither pie nor cobbler. It’s also not anything worth eating.
Each scoop leads to the entire ‘dessert’ falling apart, leaving you with a texture that’s way too soft. Blueberry grunt is the same all the way through, without any kind of structure or contrast. All you’ll get is spoonful after spoonful of the same darn thing.
Sweet and savory stop cooperating
Most people expect beans to be something savory, and that’s part of the reason that Maple baked beans are so hated. All that sweetness makes the entire dish feel off. It’s completely sweet, and you end up with a syrupy flavor that coats practically everything, but not in a good way.
The beans taste more like a dessert than a real side dish. Most Canadians try a few bites and struggle to work out what they’re eating anymore, or what they’re even supposed to do with such sheer sweetness.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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